Data Bene

Return of HOW2025

The text 'Return of HOW2025 - An event focused on open source and PostgreSQL in Jinan, China' with logos for Data Bene, PostgreSQL, and IvorySQL displayed.

The Highgo Open World conference, dedicated to the PostgreSQL ecosystem and the IvorySQL project, was held on June 27 and 28. The event was a resounding success: nearly 1,000 attendees on site, up to 8,000 simultaneous connections to the streams, and approximately 25,000 viewers in total.

The program featured 101 technical talks led by 105 speakers. The majority of sessions were in Mandarin, with an English track offered with simultaneous translation. You can view the full program at IvorySQL.io and find the replays on Weibo via this link.

There was a small group of the international community present, including Grant Zhou, who liaises and collaborates with the PostgreSQL association in China and the rest of the world.

On a technical level, the content was dense and particularly interesting. I particularly noted:

  • Alena Rybakina’s presentation on the PostgreSQL query planner and strategies for circumventing certain limitations.

  • A clear and concrete focus on Patroni (High Availability) by Alexander Kukushkin and Polina Bungina.

  • Florentz Tselai presented two topics applying his principles: simplicity and efficiency, using “AI” with PostgreSQL, and data management with Sun Tzu and the 36 Stratagems as support.

  • Also a very good introduction to Bazel and its use for Monogres (to be officially announced soon) presented energetically by Alvaro Hernandez.

    Monogres is a very interesting initiative that should help strengthen control over the software supply chain, a major theme in IT today. And I also saw it as a great opportunity to showcase PostgreSQL variations with features and fixes that aren’t always possible to include in PostgreSQL itself or backport to previous major releases.

  • Michael Meskes had the honor of giving a plenary lecture on a topic that richly deserves it: “From Code to Commerce: Open Source Business Models Today,” a keynote on open-source and free software, applied to the PostgreSQL ecosystem.

  • My colleague Andrea presented the developments and trends of companies moving to IvorySQL and PostgreSQL.

  • For my part, I presented Linux PSI in the PostgreSQL context.

Since everything is recorded, I encourage you to explore and watch the topics that interest you. There were also pre-recorded lectures in English during the event, but I admit that I took advantage of the time during the sessions to interact with participants.

Aside from the conferences, I had the chance to meet several members of the Chinese PostgreSQL community who are very well-known for their involvement in the success of PostgreSQL locally. I also had the opportunity to learn more about Cloudberry, replacing Greenplum, thanks Dianjin Wang!

Data Bene also planned a time to meet with the IvorySQL team, based largely in Shandong, the province where Jinan, the host city of the conferences, is located. Ivory is a project in which we are actively involved and which allows companies to move away from Oracle “smoothly.” This is an important topic for our clients and one that occupies a prominent place in our partnership with Highgo: they have been working on this project for several years now, and we want to enable companies everywhere to benefit from it with appropriate support and expertise.

The conferences were very well organized and the welcome was wonderful, the “Social Event” at the local “beer garden” perfectly suited to the heat of Jinan at the end of June!

Given the conference program, I bitterly regretted not understanding anything (there was 1 track in English and 5 in Mandarin)… but it is already being said that next year the Mandarin conferences could perhaps be translated (into English), and the date brought forward to May to take advantage of a milder climate.

There is so much to learn there that I will gladly return.